The Lego Movie

You can colour me surprised. Even with all the rave reviews and the excellent word-of-mouth, I really didn't think that The Lego Movie was going to be much good. The Lego franchise has felt overbearing to me over the past few years, with all the tie-in games - Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter, Lego Marvel superheroes...none of which I've been remotely interested in. Then came the trailer for this film, full of humour that seemed to be trying way, way too hard and the less-than-appealing tagline of 'From the creators of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs'. That it was animated by Animal Logic, whose Happy Feet and Legend of the Guardians I enjoyed would have been a bit of a plus, but I didn't actually find that out until the closing credits. 

By which time, of course, I was completely converted. The thing about glib, self-effacing humour is that out of context - like in a trailer - it's a lot harder to tell that it's undermining parts of the character and just seems goofy. In the film itself, it was a lot funnier, and a lot more likeable. 

And that's what The Lego Movie has done well - be likeable. And that despite also going for a biting bit of satire on modern life, which is quite an impressive feat. Plus it is very clearly aimed at Generation X as opposed to the teeny kids of today, who I imagine were mostly confused by the trippier moments and cameos from Teenage Turtles and Lando Calrissian.

This is one way that the Lego movie could really stand out - being able to use the characters from their toy ranges and mash them together...though I'm guessing there was some kind of deal with DC so that only their comic superheroes made it. It's a hell of a lot of fun to see Batman interacting with the crew of the Millennium Falcon, especially with them all exaggerated versions of themselves, not to mention a council that includes Dumbledore, Gandalf and Abraham Lincoln in his space chair. And, of course, Michaelangelo the artist and Michaelangelo the turtle. 

From the beginning the film establishes its silly tone: a very funny prologue sees Will Ferrell's character Lord Business stomping on brilliantly ridiculous boots to overwhelm Morgan Freeman's silly old wizard character Vitruvius and establish control over the film's Macguffin. We then have the main character introduced: the construction worker Emmet, who lives in a world that despite what you may have read is far more Huxley than Orwell: everyone is kept brainlessly happy, placated by mindless entertainment and overpriced coffee instead of Soma, which has the added appeal of, y'know, actually being a recognisable critique of modern American culture. Though everything is awesome - as the earworm song goes - Emmet is not only incredibly dull, but very lonely as well. He has no real defining characteristics and no friends. His comfortably life is shattered, of course, when he sees a (beautiful) intruder on his construction site, then happens upon the 'Piece of Resistance', a piece that can put a stop to the evil plans of Lord Business. 

Now a target of Lord Business and his brilliant henchman Bad Cop - who also has a good cop face, and is voiced by Liam Neeson having the time of his life - but falls in with the faction of the Master Builders, including Vitruvius and the beautiful Wyldstyle, who have the ability to disassemble the Lego parts around them and reassemble them into things that suit their needs. With them, Emmet discovers the other worlds kept apart from his - the Wild West, the medieval world, and even the mish-mash of 'Cloud Cuckoo Land' where denizens like the intensely cutesy Uni-Kitty reside. But since Emmet has the 'Piece of Resistance', Lord Business will not rest until he is captured. 

The broader context of this, of course, ends up being that classic of self-referential toy franchises, the tension between the adult collectors who become obsessive about perfection and the idea of children actually using toys as intended and being creative. Hinted at from the start with 'relics' like highlighter pens and Vitruvius' chewed-lollipop staff, there's a live-action portion that jars a little at first but ultimately works and for all that it is an obvious concept, also seems like exactly the statement a Lego movie ought to make. 

The film perfectly balances its silly humour, its epic adventure and its more serious message about creativity being stifled - with an amusing stinger about a little sister to boot. There's an eagerness to undercut sacred cows that works particularly well here, with an incredibly goofy Green Lantern, Batman's hilarious angsty song (with a final line in the version played at the end credits that is possibly the edgiest thing I've heard in a kids' film, in a song parodying edginess no less) and a very amusing version of Lando Calrissian from Billy Dee Williams himself. Add in spices of The Matrix and Toy Story, and it’s a success story.

What the Lego Movie does, it does very well - it's hilarious, it makes you like its characters, it's irreverent and it looks good, too. It's restrained, of course, by the need to look like Lego, but while that could have been a disadvantage, it also makes for the best visual idea here, which is to make all the explosions and lasers and other visual effects be constructed from CG Lego bricks as well. Great idea. One of many, which is why this unlikely film can be such a success story. It's also nice that I'll be able to have this critical success to point to the next time someone claims that 80s cartoons being toy adverts precludes any sort of artistic merit. 

Happy Feet

I’m going to agree with what most reviewers have said – for the first half, perhaps the first three quarters of this movie, it feels like it could be an instant classic, possibly even the best animated comedy ever. And then it all gets spoilt at the end.

Happy Feet has a clever and charming basis. Our anthropomorphic Emperor Penguins attract the loves of their lives by singing their ‘heart songs’. Taking cues from Moulin Rouge, the film’s soundtrack is a delightfully tongue-in-cheek mash-up of popular tunes, with numbers from The Beatles, Queen and The Beach Boys as well as cheekier nods to more hip-hop-flavoured tracks like Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ (obviously, just the refrain); at one point, a penguin throws in, ‘Let’s talk about eggs, baby / Let’s talk about you and me.’ While it’s all fantastically silly (all I could have hoped for was a few more real tap-dancing-era numbers; a brief My Way snippet in Spanish didn’t cut it), it’s also quite uplifting, and the opening scene is done perfectly: Nicole Kidman, pretending to be Marilyn Monroe, sings Prince’s ‘Kiss’, only to be joined by Hugh Jackman’s best Elvis impression. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ joins the medley, and we know the two of them are meant to be. The peerless CG on an iMAX screen, coupled with the superlative sound, make for a breathtaking spectacle.

Jackman’s character, the subtly-named Memphis, drops the couple's egg during a long, cold night, and when little Mumble hatches, it’s clear he is a little bit different. He can’t sing a note, but he can dance. Dancing, however, is taboo. ‘It’s just not penguin’, his father tells him, and by the time Mumble is grown (albeit not having lost his downy grey feathers like all his peers), voiced now by Elijah Wood in a suitably obvious, harmless way, he is an outcast, indulged only by his mother (even more subtly named Norma Jean) - as well as his childhood friend and love interest Gloria, huskily voiced by Brittney Murphy. Even the latter can’t help hurting his feelings when his tone-deaf squawks ruin her spirited performance of ‘Somebody to Love’, and Mumble’s undignified exit leads to his being chased by a leopard seal in one of several brilliantly-realised underwater sequences, and ends up meeting a gaggle of funny little Adelie penguins, who speak with broad Latino accents. Adelies place less emphasis on singing, so Mumbo fits in and starts learning to be proud of himself as he is – Hakuna Matata and all that.

It’s a very typical kiddie plot. In their first full movie, Sydney-based CG effects studio Animal Logic are playing the Pixar game – giving us a very familiar plot, overlaying it with a clever and appealing gimmick and then treating it with warmth, humour and respect – and actually beating them at it. Even Robin Williams, who plays two roles and does them both with silly accents (he’s the lead Latino, and also a prognosticating penguin with a silly soul voice a la Barry White), doesn’t go too far and ruin the humour. He’s fairly subdued (for him, anyway) and it works well. This is when the Ugly Duckling goes back and wins everyone over with the power of dance, when Rudolf shows that despite growing up as an outcast, he can do something no-one else can, and they all live happily ever after, right? Well, yes and no.

While this inevitable plot conclusion begins, religious fundamentalists (led by a crooked old thing with another silly accent – this time Hugo Weaving as a raving Scotsman), unable to accept any deviation, blame the shortage of fish on Mumble, and he sets off on a quest to appeal to the strange beings who are eating all their fish – human beings. After a disjointed trek, Mumble ends up following a fishing boat and ends up in a zoo, where he begins to lose his mind (especially since he’s surrounded by other penguins who talk like HAL. Explicitly. Even calling him ‘Dave’), until he tap-dances for a girl. They let him go back to the wild with a tracking device, and the young penguins are easily persuaded to dance, while the elders condemn them. Then the humans show up in a helicopter and the elders decide that’s proof enough that their god doesn’t exist (see, this is why tackling theological debates in your penguin movie isn’t gonna be THAT hard-hitting) and dance too. The world sees this dance and as a result, decide to fish the Antarctic waters less. I blink at the screen, stunned.

I understand Babe director George Miller wanting to make things a little more ambitious. I understand wanting an ecological message. I understand the need for a bit of a serious quest aspect to the film. I even understand a stab at the religious right. But this? This deus ex machina? This guilt-trip? This total oversimplification of how food chains and habitats work? This implication that humanity cares about cute things that dance, but is totally indifferent if they don’t, or if they’re ugly sea elephants? This idea that the ostracised will find acceptance just because they overwhelm their peers with things they haven’t seen? Okay, looking on the plus side, it was all so rushed that I doubt kids will really take it in or care, and will love the film anyway, but I take even films about tap-dancing penguins seriously in story terms, and this was a real shame.

Take the tried-and-tested route, and a tried-and-tested climax is advised – although a brave sad ending in the zoo would have won points from me, though doubtless never have gotten past screening audiences. As it is, yes, the film was brilliant fun, clever, warm and witty. But we don’t have a penguin’s ability to open our throats; we won’t swallow whatever you chuck at us, as long as it looks about right. What a shame, since even with its flaws the film remains very good indeed.

(originally written 10.12.06. Happy Feet 2 here)

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

I’ve been waiting for this film since first seeing the trailers for it. A beautiful CG film with a traditional old-fashioned epic storyline – revolving around owls! And while it was perhaps not everything that I hoped it would be, it was very enjoyable indeed, and certainly one I’d be happy to see again, even if it’s not the full 3D IMAX experience.

From Animal Logic, who animated Happy Feet, at the very least the beauty of this film must be acknowledged. Some of the settings are incredible, and if the CG models for the owls look impressive, seeing them talking, fighting and especially flying through the rain is breathtaking. Happy Feet was a feast for the eyes, but this film was just far more ambitious, more varied and more striking to look at.

And while the naïve, old-fashioned tone clearly hasn’t captured popular imagination
like tap-dancing penguins did, I found this plot to be more interesting and compelling, mostly because it didn’t have an annoying and preachy final act. Indeed, though there was a degree of formulaic Hollywood preaching (the plot revolves around the struggle against a group of barn owls who have decided they are ethnically superior to smaller species and begun to call themselves ‘the Pure Ones’), the issues raised in the simple good-against-evil story were quite interesting. Hero-worship of warriors is tempered with a grizzly old fighter spitting out the realities of battle, and while the plucky young hero told that he will be useless in a fight and that it takes many years to train as a guardian eventually holds his own against veteran warriors in a rather unlikely manner, it feels more like a relativistic complexity than the weak writing of…well, blatantly contradicting the lesson you had your protagonist learn. After all, a heroic story should end with a big fight.

Do the same film with live-action actors and admittedly it would be nothing special. It’s a very by-the-numbers story and it doesn’t even end properly, leaving things open for sequels. It suffers from Star Wars chronology syndrome, too, setting up the impression of an ages-old mythology and then revealing that all these stories about olden times and great heroes are actually from within living memory. But the fact is that this film is about owls, owls who can use tools and speak and harness mysterious magnetic powers. It doesn’t need to be that strong in story terms, because it is carried by its visuals, its spectacle and the sight of realistic owls interacting like people.

The only thing it needed was more original characters and a better story. Which is why I’m very interested by rumours that Animal Logic are going to produce a Watership Down remake.

That said, if they do adapt more of the Guardians of Ga’Hoole books, I’ll certainly be buying a ticket. I just hope… they don’t put in another Owl City song just for their name. It was alright for the credits, but for a montage? They could have chosen so many better options….